Fancy some cocaine?

FOSDEM is quite the experience, thousands of geeks
running around, dozens of free and open source projects, and plenty of
Club-Mate and beer for every attendee to purchase. The weekend is exceptionally
busy, and for me, the sleep at night between the chaos is always interesting.

One night, I had a dream which I can remember, where I found myself in
conversation about something or another with a colleague. We were sitting at a
table not unlike one which could be found in the ULB Cafeteria at FOSDEM.
Mid-conversation, my dream-colleague casual took out a small container, scooped
a bit out with his fingernail, snorted into his nose what I dream-determined
was cocaine, and continued in conversation. In my dream I found myself terribly
offended.

Since when was it socially acceptable to be a casual user of cocaine, and so
blatantly use it in public!

I do not believe I dream-said anything, but I was dream-offended enough to
where I remembered the dream when I awoke.

I started to reflect on how abhorrently hypocritical dream-Tyler had been. The
day prior to my dream, Kohsuke handed me a bottle
of beer, purchased from the openSUSE folks, no later than 10 in the morning.
Overall, FOSDEM is a chaotic two-day conference fueled entirely on caffeine,
nicotine, and beer. In fact, I found myself sitting at a table more than once,
at all hours of the day, discussing one thing or another with people beer in
hand. This casual consumption around technology events is not something I am
the first to recognize, but I haven’t ever mentally equated a “casual beer”
with something like a “casual bump of cocaine.”

While I don’t expect FOSDEM to change anytime soon, I encourage my fellow
hackers to consider what level of casual drug use they believe is socially
acceptable at any technology event.